This invention relates to automatic messaging systems and more particularly to a method and apparatus which, when a user poses questions to other system users, requires responses having a specific form and automatically generates a response table which is viewable via a display screen and which arranges responses in an orderly fashion. In our current economic climate it is often extremely difficult to make direct contact with an individual. This is particularly true in the business environment where, in many cases, people are traveling or at intra-office meetings more than they are in their own offices. The realities of busy schedules often mean that the only way to communicate with a person is to leave a message and wait for the message recipient to get back via telephone or the like. Communication is often expedited by leaving messages which specify information sought. In this manner, if the original message sender is not available when the recipient calls back, the recipient can leave a response message including the information sought.
For a long time most offices relied on, and to this day some offices still rely on, manual message protocols wherein, in the absence of an intended recipient, a personal assistant transcribes messages longhand. Manual protocols have at least three shortcomings.
First, these protocols are often unreliable as an assistant may fail to transcribe a message, may misplace a message or may place a message in an unexpected location where it is not later located by the intended recipient.
Second, these protocols are relatively expensive, especially in modern offices where message taking is usually only one of many different tasks an assistant is expected to perform.
Third, even if messages are transcribed accurately and placed in an expected location, there is no way for the intended recipient to access the message information without either being physically present in the expected location or contacting an assistant to access the information. This makes these systems virtually unworkable, especially for business people who are typically out of the office for several days at a time. Access problems are compounded by the fact that many people may only have time to check messages after typical business hours when an assistant is unavoidable.
To improve communication several voice messaging systems have been developed which facilitate remote messaging and remote retrieval of messages. Two particularly popular systems are referred to as voice mail and E-mail systems.
With voice and E-mail systems, each system user has a system account and an associated voice or E-mail "box", respectively. A mail box is a virtual location in an electronic memory where messages are started. Voice mail is typically used with a standard phone system. With voice mail, when a person calls another person and the person called is not available, the voice mail system answers the call and instructs the caller to leave a message. The caller then verbally articulates the intended message and the system stores the message in the other persons voice mail box for later retrieval by the person called.
With E-mail, messages are typically generating using a computer terminal or the like and are then sent to an intended recipient via a telephone line or an Internet link. The recipient's computer (or network) receives and stores the E-mail message in the recipient's E-mail box. The recipient can retrieve the E-mail message at any time after storage.
Many additional features have been developed which add value to electronic messaging systems. For example, to protect messages from unauthorized access, when a user accesses either a voice mail or an E-mail system, the system requires the user to enter some form of identification information to retrieve or send messages. Typically the identification information will include a personal identification number (PIN).
Another useful feature is that most systems allow a single message to be sent to a list of recipients. This feature makes it easy to communicate with several recipients at the same time. This feature is particularly useful in cases where a message sender needs to obtain information of the same kind from a plurality of different system users.
Yet another advantageous system feature allows a system user to observe mail summaries on a CRT screen or the like. The user can judiciously select which of the messages should be observed immediately, which can be observed later and which can be discarded without further review. While this is a standard feature associated with most E-mail systems, this feature can also be used with voice mail systems as described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,003,577 entitled VOICE AND DATA INTERFACE TO A VOICE-MAIL SERVICE SYSTEM which issued on Mar. 26, 1991.
While voice and E-mail systems have many clear advantages over manual messaging protocols, voice and E-mail systems also have a number of short comings. First, when a message initiator sends a message to a system user requesting several pieces of information, the recipient may respond in a manner that differs from the order in which the information was requested or may not leave all requested information. This is particularly true in cases where many different pieces of information are required from the recipient.
Second, a recipient may respond to a message in a manner which is difficult to understand or includes a lot of extraneous information which was not requested by the message initiator. For example, if a sales manager requests projected sales information from a sales representative, the representative may leave a message which, in addition to the sales information, rambles on about last weeks football game, problems with the representatives new automobile, or anything else on the representatives mind. Rambling responses make it extremely difficult for the message initiator to extract required information which, in many cases, will be buried somewhere within a verbal response. This is also true of E-mail systems except that, instead of listening for a verbal response for requested information, a textual response must be searched or visually scanned.
In addition, even when required information is provided at the beginning of a response, unless the entire response is listened to or read, there is no way to determine if other important but unrequested information is provided in the response. Thus, a message initiator and response receiver must peruse an entire response to extract requested information and determine the import of other message information.
Third, when one message including several questions is sent to several recipients, recipients may respond in different orders. For example, where a message includes five different areas of inquiry and the message is sent to twenty sales representatives, a first representative may answer the questions in order, a second representative may answer the questions in reverse order, a third may answer the third question first, the second question second, the first question third, the fifth question fourth and the fourth question fifth, and so on. In addition to making it difficult to understand such a message, in such a case it would be extremely difficult at best to collect and manually organize such responses in an intelligent manner.
One solution to these problems is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,602,129 which is entitled ELECTRONIC AUDIO COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM WITH VERSATILE MESSAGE DELIVERY which issued on Jul. 22, 1986. That patent describes a system wherein a user uses a telephone to formulate a questionnaire including several different questions. The system delivers the questionnaire to designated system users. When a recipient retrieves the questionnaire, the system steps the recipient through the questionnaire, one question at a time. After a question has been articulated, the system waits for the recipient to enter a response via the telephone keypad or via voice annunciation, whichever is appropriate. The system stores the responses. Then, when the questionnaire initiator re-accesses the system, the initiator can retrieve the responses and listen thereto via a telephone.
Another useful aspect of this system is that it allows the questionnaire initiator to designate types of acceptable responses. For example, certain questions may require a YES or NO answer, others may require a numeric answer, while still others may require a verbal response. The initiator can designate acceptable response types accordingly.
While this solution addresses many of the problems described above, this solution also has many disadvantages. For example, assume a regional sales representative for a software company needs twenty subordinate sales representatives to provide answers to seven different questions. Also assume that it is 4:00 PM on Thursday and the answers must be received and tallied for presentation to a national manager, by 10:00 AM on Friday morning.
While the solution in U.S. Pat. No. 4,602,129 and summarized above facilitates questionnaire formation and administration and orderly responses, that solution requires that the representative listen to many different messages to retrieve required information. In the example, the regional representative must listen to twenty different response messages, each message including seven different responses. In addition, to keep track of which questions are being responded to, the representative may also have to listen to each or at least some of the questions prior to each response.
Only after listening to each subordinate representative's responses can the regional representative determine if each of the seven questions has been answered. Moreover, only after having listened to all received responses can the representative determine if all twenty subordinate representatives responded and, if not, which representatives failed to respond.
After responses have been received, the regional representative listens to the responses and, while listening, must tally the responses. After the tally is complete, the representative must then enter the tallied information in a spread sheet or the like to generate a formal presentation for the national manager.
Clearly response retrieval with the described system is extremely time consuming and tedious work. In addition, in the example above, many of the subordinate representatives may not provide a response until Friday morning which would make the 10:00 AM deadline extremely difficult, if not impossible, to meet.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have an electronic messaging system which facilitates easy examination of question responses in a response table tailored for a specific questionnaire. In addition, it would be advantageous to have a system which automatically forms the response table including tallied responses.